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Scientists Identify a Potentially Universal Mechanism of Aging
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Nov 28, 2008 07:08 PM
from the wonder-if-boosterspice-is-covered-by-health-care dept.
from the wonder-if-boosterspice-is-covered-by-health-care dept.
cybergenesis2008 points us to a summary of research out of Harvard Medical School in which a set of genes known to affect aging in yeast was found to affect aging in mice as well. The genes, called sirtuins, perform two particular tasks; regulating which genes are "on" and "off," and also helping to repair damaged DNA. As an organism ages, the frequency of damage to DNA increases, leaving less time for the sirtuins' regulatory tasks. The increasingly unregulated genes then become a significant factor in aging. Realizing this, the researchers "administered extra copies of the sirtuin gene [to the mice], or fed them the sirtuin activator resveratrol, which in turn extended their mean lifespan by 24 to 46 percent." We discussed the plans for this research a few years ago.
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Geneticists Claim Aging Breakthrough 408 comments
Quirk writes "The Science section of The Guardian is reporting on recent experiments by geneticists 'to unlock the secrets of the aging process has created organisms that live six times their usual lifespan, raising hopes that it might be possible to slow ageing in humans.' 'In the experiment, Dr Longo's team took yeast cells and knocked out two key genes, named Sir2 and SCH9. The latter governs the cells' ability to convert nutrients into energy. They found that instead of dying after a week, the cells lived for up to six weeks.''Research has now begun to test whether the effect works in mice.' So it looks like we might soon have near immortal, fearless mice."
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My genes are regulated as hell (Score:4, Funny)
Re:My genes are regulated as hell (Score:4, Funny)
Hell, reading the article's title, I thought they had discovered that time passing as a universal cause for people to age.
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Longer "Use by" dates on mice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Longer "Use by" dates on mice (Score:4, Funny)
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Glad we're waiting... (Score:2)
Oh... wait... [google.com]
Though it will be interesting to see if this has any noticeable effects on the many people that I'm sure are taking this stuff regularly.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Immortality is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm honestly scared of the day that they do figure out how to cure aging, because it will lead to an even greater stratification of social status and class. Most of the wealth in this country (and indeed most of the world) is concentrated with men who are over the age of 50-60 years. When they die, that wealth is then redistributed. Those people will be amongst the first to benefit from any such medical process; And if history has been any judge, that medical process will be expensive and there'll be little incentive to make it cheaper. The end result will be people who are born and work their entire lives, then die, never having had the opportunity to aquire wealth, because those who still have it aren't dying anymore.
This won't be something for humanity to celebrate. If and when the day comes, then we'll have to answer the question of what happens when numbers increase but resources decrease? And the answer will be in what kind of life is possible in that world. It won't be as good as the one you have now, I assure you.
Re:Immortality is scary (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can say younger for 50% longer that means there is 50% more time you can work. If they say raise retirement age from 60s to 80's and at 80 you feel like you are 60 then what can happen is there is more time you can contribute to social security thus more money in the system. Also longer time where the person is benefiting to the economy and less of taking what you deserve. You are under the impression that as people gain wealth most of them will horde it. While the truth is that they will try to spend it. So if the average joe can make more when they do retire with an exptected 20-30 years of their lives they will spend it more liberally, then if they had little.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Funny)
You are under the impression that as people gain wealth most of them will horde it. While the truth is that they will try to spend it.
There are many economists, researchers, and liberal arts majors, along with about 200 million working poor, that very much disagree with you. But you can ignore the liberal arts majors.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:4, Interesting)
You can ignore all of them. There are also 100 million Americans who believe that the Earth is being visited by little green men who have nothing better to do than shove metal objects in the anal cavities of dirt-poor yokels in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Idaho. Just because an idea is popular, that doesn't mean it's true.
As for the original claim - he's absolutely right. Most people don't accumulate wealth, they spend it. That's part of the reason why the US is in such a hole right now - because people like living beyond their means.
What you and the other numbnut are referring to is the infinitesimal percentage of people who actually know how to make large amounts of money, and use it wisely. Personally, I don't give a damn if those people manage to "hoard" ten times what they can accumulate today - they generally generate so much wealth and advancement in the process of acquiring their wealth that their personal fortunes pale in comparison. You and your buddy can bitch about Bill Gates and Richard Branson all you like, but each of them does more good for the human race in one day than you will in a lifetime.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
. There are also 100 million Americans who believe that the Earth is being visited by little green men who have nothing better to do than shove metal objects in the anal cavities of dirt-poor yokels in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Idaho. Just because an idea is popular, that doesn't mean it's true.
I doubt 1/3 of all Americans even believe that there can be intelligence elsewhere in the universe, much less engaging in homoerotic xenosexual fantasies.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know it's bad form to post 2 responses in a row, but this was just to perfect to pass up:
Out of the 3 people who respond to my original comment so far, one of them only did so in order to defend UFO's. So, 1/3 = 33.3% :)
Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Radio - Hertz - German
TV - Paul Nipkow (mechanical) German, Karl Braun (electronic CRT) German
Phone - Antonio Meucci Italian
Car - Nicholas Joseph Cugnot (Steam) French, Alphonse Bear de Rochas (ICE otto cycle) French
The last three are derivatives of everything else, the internet is electronic communication, space flight is an extension of Von Braun (German) and the Russians were there first, and a modern understanding of physics is so vague as to be useless. But Einstein was not an American citizen until the war came and he was already 53 years old.
You're welcome - The Rest of The World.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What little information [fairfield.edu] we have on the subject of wealth distribution states that infinitesimal percentage (5%) owns over 71% of all wealth in the country.
It's worth pointing out that this is almost certainly the most generous distribution of wealth in tens of thousands of years.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You would be wrong. According to the the Bank of Finland [www.bof.fi], "When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia had a Gini coefficient of 0.29." That is very similar to the current Scandinavian countries, and vastly better (in this one respect) than the U.S., which is at 0.45.
Remember, a Gini coefficient of zero means that everyone has the same income,
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Your link doesn't even address the statement you quoted, so I don't really see how you can expect me to revise anything.
At least I'm providing links, achem. You said earlier "What you and the other numbnut are referring to is the infinitesimal percentage of people who actually know how to make large amounts of money, and use it wisely." I was quoting statistics about how big that percentage is. These people don't make large amounts of money, they have large amounts of money. The numbers suggest that these people save a disproportionate amount of wealth; their overall flow, that is, how much money they are making over a given
Re:Immortality is scary (Score:4, Informative)
Bill Gates has not just sat on his horde. One of the reasons that he's no longer at the top is because he's donated vast sums to various causes, totaling nearly $30 billion, and has said that he intends to do the same with almost all of the rest.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that economics doesn't work that way. The GDP is not about "creating value", but mostly about moving money around. You're also wrong when you talk about "the average American worker" when mentioning TOTAL/COUNT.
General Electric has a Net Income of 22 billion dollars, and 370 000 workers. That's nearly 60 thousand dollars worth of profit for every single employee. So an extremely profitable company will yield something like 2/3 of your estimate. Even worse when you consider that GE is a good employer.
If you compare GE's 60k USD and your mentioned average 40k USD, it's a pretty fair game: their profits are not based just on their workforce but also based on more than half a trillion dollars in debt and more than 130 billion worth of assets. Taking only 60k of profit per employee while having to finance such a massive infrastructure is pretty fair.
You also fail to account the fact that most companies are owned by the average american. While powerful banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are the first-tier owners of billions of dollars worth of stocks, they're actually buying them in the name of pension funds and also using money borrowed from your bank account.
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Riddle me this, AARPMan (Score:3, Insightful)
If they say raise retirement age from 60s to 80's and at 80 you feel like you are 60
Why has the retirement age not already risen with the vast improvements in healthcare and life expectancy?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Immortality is scary (Score:4, Insightful)
Before they cure aging, they have to cure arthritis. What use is living to be a thousand if for 940 of those years you are immobile.
Arthritis is an interesting case, since it strikes humans after breeding age mostly, so evolution hasn't killed it off.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Funny)
The answer is simple: anti-arthritis death sqauds. If you end up with arthritis, we kill you and your whole family.
It's obvious- why hasn't anyone implemented it yet?
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:4, Interesting)
DISCLAIMER: I'm not a scientist, or even particularly intelligent
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Funny)
The one flaw I see in your plan is that I'm not a 90-year old man without arthritis. Other than that, your logic is excellent.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:4, Interesting)
What will happen? I can answer that in one word -- "rebellion"
The rich may not age, but they will still bleed.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
What will happen? I can answer that in one word -- "rebellion"
Oh, please. We'd be too busy stabbing each other in the back, fighting for what little scraps they do leave us, to ever do them much harm. Much as it has always been.
What kills them in the end (because nothing can last forever) will not be a rebellion of the poor. It will be their own stupidity as they will, inevitably, become bored, complacent, decadent and distracted - random misfortune will do the rest. It won't be till the very end, when their power is already good as gone, that angry mobs storm the palace and take credit for the people's great victory.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever heard of the French revolution? How about the Soviet revolution? Chinese revolution? Cuban?
Did you read the last sentence of my post?
Look at the state of the French government before the revolution, for instance. A weak king of a bankrupt nation who couldn't command the allegiance of his own nobles except with expensive bribes and positions in Versailles. The French Crown had been pissing away its power for decades before the mobs swept in at the very end to deliver the death blow. And then what happened? They immediately turned on each other and the Reign of Terror began. A mere four years after
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You're making the assumption that the amount of wealth in the world is fixed, and that the only way to acquire it is to get it from someone else (via death or other means). I think most people will agree that that is a false assumption.
Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Wealth is not finite. There is more wealth in the world right now than there was 500 years ago. Wealth is a concept.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Informative)
If you take the total amount of assets (converted to a monentary value) and divide by the estimated world population, you're in for a shock: That number hasn't really changed in the last 500 years.
Really? Do you have the figures to back this up? Because simply looking at the average wealth in the "West", plus the average wealth in the two most populous countries which, while not super high, is way higher than it used to be, it seems to me that the per capita wealth in the world is a lot more than it was 500 years ago. Yes, some groups are being left behind, but on the whole people are much richer than they were.
Consider, for example, that 500 years ago famine was a fairly regular occurrence. Now people only die of hunger in politically-diseased countries, and there really aren't that many of them. The vast majority of the world has enough to eat. That alone puts the modern day far ahead.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
If and when the day comes, then we'll have to answer the question of what happens when numbers increase but resources decrease?
Or maybe people will finally start realizing that (especially with ever-increasing technology) economics isn't a zero-sum game.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
There is so much wrong in your post that it actually makes me weep that you're really serious.
Those people will be amongst the first to benefit from any such medical process; And if history has been any judge, that medical process will be expensive and there'll be little incentive to make it cheaper.
If history is any judge, medical processes get consistently cheaper and more widely available.
The end result will be people who are born and work their entire lives, then die, never having had the opportunity to aquire wealth, because those who still have it aren't dying anymore.
Do you seriously believe the only way to acquire wealth is to sit and wait for someone to die and have it given to you? Sheesh.
Let me tell you the easiest way to become wealthy: SAVE. That simple. Don't be a typical consumer idiot. Save 25% of your income. By the time you retire, you will be one of those rich people you think hoard all the wealth.
If and when the day comes, then we'll have to answer the question of what happens when numbers increase but resources decrease?
What makes you think immortality leads to population increases? Actually, I think it's far more likely that it will lead to a decreasing population. I doubt that immortal people will continue to crank out kids decade after decade. It's more likely that an older population of people who have "been there, done that" will be done making kids, and we'll actually have an human extinction crisis in 1,000 years.
What that means is that immorality leads to a decreasing population leading to more resources for fewer people.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
If history is any judge, medical processes get consistently cheaper and more widely available.
I'm sorry but the facts [nchc.org] do not support this conclusion. The percentage of uninsured persons in the United States has been on the rise for some time and as of 2006 was at just over 20%. The percentage of people (workers and dependents) with employment-based health insurance has dropped from 70 percent in 1987 to 59 percent in 2006. Clearly, availability is going down. As to costs... You must not read the papers. Medicaid is about to go bankrupt due to skyrocketing health care costs.
Do you seriously believe the only way to acquire wealth is to sit and wait for someone to die and have it given to you? Sheesh.
I didn't say it was the only way. They could spend it. The majority of wealth (~70%) is owned by under 5% of the population, and given their spending habits, I just think it's far more practical to wait for them to die.
Let me tell you the easiest way to become wealthy: SAVE. That simple. Don't be a typical consumer idiot. Save 25% of your income. By the time you retire, you will be one of those rich people you think hoard all the wealth.
I thought the easiest way was being born into a rich family or winning the lottery. And as to "saving"... Honey, don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining; Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck, and we spend everything we get on basic necessities. We're not "consumer idiots" -- the technical term for people like us is fucking broke.
What makes you think immortality leads to population increases?
People live longer and they're still going to want to fuck. Heeeere's your sign.
I doubt that immortal people will continue to crank out kids decade after decade.
Funny, since most people look at having kids as their best shot at immortality.
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Re:Immortality is scary (Score:5, Interesting)
Medicare is going bankrupt because aggregate costs are increasing. But that says nothing about individual procedures. If we wanted to provide 1950-level care today, it would cost less than it cost in 1950. But we expect better, and so we pay more, even though the cost of the individual pieces has gone down.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I thought the easiest way was being born into a rich family or winning the lottery. And as to "saving"... Honey, don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining; Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck, and we spend everything we get on basic necessities. We're not "consumer idiots" -- the technical term for people like us is fucking broke.
The technical term for people like you is "delusional". If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're living the American Dream, a.k.a., you're living beyond your means. And guess what, you don't have the fucking right to live a lifestyle you can't support. Deal with it. You can start by spending the time you normally use to read Slashdot on doing something productive. It's not a basic necessity. Neither is your TV, DVD player, or going out to the pub. I'm sick to death of whiny bastards with an disp
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the wealth in this country (and indeed most of the world) is concentrated with men who are over the age of 50-60 years.
That is absolutely untrue and verging on propaganda. The vast majority of the wealth in western society is controlled by women. Think about who dies first and who gets left the money in the will. And even when both spouses are alive it is usually the female half who performs the majority of the spending. Who is most advertising aimed at? It isn't men that's for sure.
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Yeah, because luck, genetics, connections, and plain old crime don't factor into it at all.
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What kills healthcare is (a) lawsuits, a necessary evil, and (b) nationalized medicine (e.g., where Canada's Supreme Court has ruled that "a right to healthcare" means only a right to be on a waiting list.
Bullshit.
You do realise that more countries in the world than Canada have "nationalised healthcare", right ? And that most of them have better $/result efficiencies, and healthier populations, than the US ?
About the only times I can think of where it would be preferable - from a healthcare perspective
I know a better one (Score:2)
Fun. No really, the older I get, the more fun life gets. My thirties rocked hard, and life in my forties is thus far great.
Re: (Score:2)
I would rather have fun and NOT age.
For one, I will have more fun.
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but you can be immature forever.
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You can only be young once,
but you can be immature forever.
Amen to that. I'm a parent, and I take parenthood very seriously, but that doesn't mean I need to be 'normal' and act like I'm not allowed to have fun anymore..
Fortunately, my kid can cope with me. Well, most of the time he can...
Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
There are two problems I see with the usual theory that aging is related to "accumulation of damage", as the article seems to imply:
1) Humans live, barring accidents and disease, about 80-90 years, 120 at the outside. My dog lives 15-16 years, 22 on the outside. My dog gets all the normal signs of aging -- arthritis, gray hair, join and muscle pain, etc. But at an age that humans are not even entering their physical prime.
2) From a certain point of view, there is only one organism on earth, and it's billions of years old. Pieces of the organism fall off now and then, but it constantly renews itself. Slightly different each, but going through a consistent cycle of "physical prime". How can it renew itself when, presumably, all cells are "accumulating damage"?
Oh Great Spaghetti Monster (Score:3, Funny)
Yum. /Hi. (Score:3)
As an organism ages, the frequency of damage to DNA increases,
Don't you just love scientific religion? 'Tis a mathematical certainty! /bow
Re:24%-46% longer human life (Score:5, Funny)
After reading over your 30-page argument and its wealth of calculations, charts, and academic sources cited across multiple peer-reviewed journals stating much the same, I have to say that I completely agree with you.
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Seen a newspaper lately? 0% longer human life is an economic disaster.
Re:uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Put another way, it's not the passage of time itself that causes us to age, it's something that occurs during that passage of time, such as the process we're talking about here.
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Re:it's called entropy (Score:4, Insightful)
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